Self and Its ‘Strategies for Immortality’

Abstract

The online self is one that is acutely aware of the transience of its moral life and its limitations on this earth. Through its disembodied presence online and its ineradicable qualities, the virtual world offers strategies to extend its mortality. Our pull towards the virtual reveals our deep-seated fear of death and the need to place fragments of ourselves to float infinitum as data. Throughout human civilisation, we have sought to retain ourselves on earth through cultural artefacts and, historically, the rich have had more opportunities to do this. The internet, often envisaged as a democratic platform for the masses, offers new ways for recording memory and for renegotiating our ephemeral mortal lives. This chapter discusses our historical anxiety about our morality and mechanisms to sustain our presence in the online environment.

Freud, S. (1905). “Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality.” In The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, gen. edited and translated by James Strachey, vol. 7, 156–157. London: Hogarth, 1986.Google Scholar

Lacan J. (1998). The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book XI: The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis. Edited by Jacques-Alain Miller. Translated by Alan Sheridan. New York and London: Norton, 1977.Google Scholar

Schopenhauer, Arthur. (1966). “On Death and Its Relation to the Indestructibility of Our Inner Nature.” In The World as Will and Representation, vol. II. Translated by E.F.J. Payne. New York: Dover.Google Scholar